“Abi,” I called out, “I need you to wake up. You’re not dead. This is nothing more than a bad dream. Eric needs our help.”
A faint stirring on the other end of his thread told me that Abi had heard me. An indistinct murmuring plucked at my ears, and I concentrated intently to make sense of his words.
“... hear you,” Abi said. “How do I find you?”
“Open your eyes,” I said. “I can’t talk to you after you wake up, but I’ll join you soon.”
It was confusing to juggle the different layers of reality. I was in a deep meditative state, so near to the Grand Design and its primal pattern it was easier for me to talk through the threads of fate. My friends were all in shallower realms of consciousness, steeped in the dreamlike states of their own minds. Physically, though, we were all close together. If Abi could wake himself from his dream, he’d be back in the tunnel, still held in my serpents.
I crossed my fingers and hoped all this worked. I didn’t think I had time to venture into each vision and drag my friends out of their individual dreams.
“Clem,” I said, “you know what you’re seeing isn’t real. Snap out of it and come to me. Eric needs our help.”
Unlike Abi, her response was so loud and clear, it was as if she were standing right next to me. “You already went to see Eric? It’s only been a few seconds since you left me.”
That was a relief to hear. If so little time had passed for Clem, then my journey to visit Eric had taken little subjective time.
“Good,” I said. “I’m leaving my meditation now. I’ll join you in a second.”
Before I returned to the physical realm, I fixed Eric’s thread in my mind. It had faded so much it was little more than a wisp of smoke twisting in a gentle breeze. It would be gone, soon.
I opened my eyes and saw Clem watching Abi, who was cradled in my serpents. My wounded friend was conscious, but just barely. His eyes drifted closed as I watched, and it took him considerable effort to look at us again.
“My legs,” he said, his words slurred, “they hurt. Glad I’m not dead.”
Abi’s forced good humor raised a lump in my throat. I hated to see him in pain like this, and I hated even more that I had to ask for his help. There was no choice. I needed all four of my friends, and we couldn’t let Eric fade away in the prison of his hallucination.
“As am I,” I said. “Eric doesn’t want to leave his vision. I’ve convinced him to come with us, but only if I can assure him I won’t turn into the monster he’s seen in his version of the future. To do that, I need your help.”
Abi had drifted off again. He roused himself a moment later, his eyes wide and filled with fear. He shook his head to chase away the dark future he’d foreseen, then looked me in the eye. “Whatever you need,” he said, “I’ll do it.”
“You know I will, too,” Clem said confidently. “What’s your plan?”
I ran through my sketchy scheme in my thoughts, putting everything in order before I tried to explain it. It was theoretical, and it might not work at all. But it was the only shot we had, and I had to take it.
“I want to cut all four of us free from the Grand Design,” I said. “With your threads of fate removed from the pattern, you won’t be bound by the futures you’ve seen. Unfortunately, the only way to reassure Eric that I won’t turn into a tyrant is to bind those threads to mine.”
Clem stroked Abi’s brow, smoothing his ruffled hair and brushing beads of sweat from his skin. She considered my words for a moment, then reached out and took my hand. “What will that do?”
“I hope it’ll keep me from doing anything the three of you disagree with,” I said. “If our ultimate fates are all tied together, I don’t think I can make a big decision about the Grand Design and the Flame that the three of you don’t agree with. The biggest risk I see is that anything that happens to one of us will happen to all of us. That may not be such a great thing for you three. I have a lot of enemies, and if I die...”
Abi had drifted off again. His head twitched as if he was tormented by a dream. Clem watched him and murmured soothing words. The way her brows furrowed, I knew she was in deep thought. I waited for her to finish chewing on everything I’d said. I didn’t want to rush Clem, because if there was a flaw in my plan, she was the one most likely to see it. She needed time to consider every angle of our problem, and I gave it to her.
Finally, she took a deep breath and nodded to me.
“I trust you,” she said. “Whatever happens, I know you’re doing the best you can.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Then I went to work.
Cutting through the thread of fate would almost instantly summon one of the warped. I’d learned that in Mama Weaver’s sanctum. So, rather than slicing through my friends’ cords, I first went to work binding us together. It went faster than I’d imagined, and my serpents wove loops of jinsei around our threads. Delicate stitches from the Weaver of Fate technique transformed the separate lines into a single thicker cord.
The trio of original threads wound away from the new one I’d formed, binding us all to the Grand Design. I waited for a few moments after I’d completed the binding, watching my friends for any signs of discomfort. Though Abi’s eyes twitched beneath their lids, he didn’t cry out, and Clem hardly seemed to have noticed anything had happened.
“Is
